AS Rock Extreme 4 Z97 and the i5 4670K

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Hi all,

So I finally got all my bits for my new build which is running lovely at the moment with idle temps of 27c.

What I'd like to do is Overclock the CPU a little bit or maybe even stretch it's legs a bit to see what it can do, now my previous build was a Phenom 2 x4 940 BE which I could only manage to get to 3.4GHz on air, I never upped the voltage of the vcore as I didn't fully understand what I was tuning and without a definitive explanation I was weary of possibly breaking my kit.

So here the rig I ended up with.

AS Rock Z97 Extreme 4 Z97
i5 4670k @ 3.4Ghz, cooled by xigma stealth idle is at 27c
8GB Corsair Vengeance RAM @ 2133
Sapphire R9 290 Tri-x @ stock speeds idle is at 35c
Corsair GS800 800w PSU

The new bios has really thrown me as theres a plethora of options and even automated overclocking, personally I'm a little reluctant to use the automated tools as I believe i'll learn more and probably gain more by tweaking it manually, not to mention that i've read that having the VCore on adaptable can be bad for the CPU or stability.

I have had a good look around the internet and have had a short sniff around THW but haven't come across anything that would give me a decent enough guide I could have faith in.

For example the vcore, there appears to be two of them? I've read that keeping the vcore below 1.30v is a good idea and primarily around 1.25 if possible, but which one ? :-/

Any ideas and help would be great, the UEFI bios looks great but it's confused the crap out of me.

Also for the record the machine runs pretty much anything i've thrown at it really well, I suppose it's just my need to want to do a bit more and curiosity.

Cheers.

PS: Apologies if this is the millionth "How do i overclock this or this thread?!?!"
 
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Alpha3031

Alpha3031

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When it's unstable (stress with prime95 for loong time), up the volts 0.01 V at a time, repeat until you get too high temps (hopefully with the haswell chip you'll hit a thermal ceiling of about 80 degC under stress before getting to dangerous volts) anything below 1.3 is fine for daily use and your chip will break eventually.
 
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Which one is the vcore that I should be tweaking to less than 1.3? As like i said there's two.
 
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That's actually what I said I didn't want to do m8.

Heres all the voltage tweakables.

CPU input voltage
CPU Vcore
CPU Cache voltage
System agent voltage
CPU Analogue IO voltage
CPU Digital IO Voltage

It's cool if you don't want to help, leave it for someone else.

This is day two for me, i've never had an intel CPU before and the terminology has thrown me a bit, it's not that i won't work it out, I just wanted to know what the voltages ment so I could OC it a bit that's all.
 
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Alpha3031

Alpha3031

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input voltage = volts to VRM
Vcore = volts VRM to CPU core
CPU cache voltage = voltage to CPU cache
System agent voltage = Don't touch
Other two = mem OC

I want to help, but you're gonna have to tell me things.
Also, before asking, try google, it can make your life much easier (with instant results and whatnot)
 
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Sorry m8, felt like you were palming me off with an automated tool :(

This does help a lot, I've googled it quite a bit but only managed to find other combinations of the as rock and the 4670k which would have given me different voltages etc, I found quite a useful thread on overclocknet, it is about different boards but the explanations are very in depth with some dummy reasoning (Meeee :) )

An sorry to sound like a bit of a doughnut feel like i've never done this before and I have lol, just the terminology has threw me off a bit, I don't update as often as i'd like to.

I'll have a good look at it tonight, I also just jump into things but on this occasion I thought i'd seek at least some help.

so the CPU Input Voltage should be left do you think? and the vcore is the one that deals directly with the CPU voltage so that's the one that should be around 1.25 - 1.3 (although preferably 1.2) And appreciate you finding that guide too i'll have a serious look over that later on.

cheers m8.
 
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Alpha3031

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Make sure you have the CPU input high enough, probably higher than vCore, other wise, it just doesn't make sense. Remember to stress test for at least 10 mins and see if you have good temps.

PS you're welcome, and there isn't really any tool that can OC your cpu for you as well as you can. Happy overclocking.
 
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dlads

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cheers m8, i'll give it a good whirl tonight and i'll post on here what yields I get. The bios makes me feel like every door has another ten doors behind them.
 
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dlads

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Ok so i had a bit of a tweak and ended up on 4.4GHz, which I was quite impressed with, the CPU was idling at around 28 - 35 and under stress it went up to 65 when using prime95 (which i've been told is a bad thing to use on haswells)

Problem is a few of the games i've played have crashed during the game (Titanfall and Black Ops 2) , windows was absolutely fine no errors at all, only time I had a problem is when I went with their suggested OC.

Main multiplier was set to 44 and the cache was set to 38, i bumped the cache to 42. (wasn't sure what to set it to but apparently it can be up to the cpu multiplier which is 44)

Vcore was set to 1.25 and I had a crash (BSOD) set it to 1.275, games crashed, so bumped it to 1.28, haven't tested a game yet as it was late.

Speed step off.

Spread spectrum off.

Everthing else i auto or off, except things like turbo which I had to leave on apparently.

Oh and DRAM has a profile which is 9-11-11-31 which equates to 2133MHz which is my RAM's stated speed, voltage for that was set by the profile and is 1.65, I thought that was a little high as my friend has the same RAM and his timings are 11-11-11-27 and his voltage is 1.5 ?

any ideas what may be causing the crashes based upon what i've read?

cheers.

PS: I'm actually at work so i'll have a look when i get home and maybe try to post some pics of the bios on here.

Might need to make a new thread.
 
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Alpha3031

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Cache freq. doesn't matter much, drop it to about 1/2 to achieve better stabillty
Prime95 is fine, if you get high temperatures that would be a problem.
DRAM timings are the lower the better.
As you have overclocked your CPU it may not have enough power, see if you can increase the voltage.
For CPU related OC
Core>Cache or memory
test for memory stability with memtest86+
Also, usually the GPU is the bottleneck, so you should think about OC'ing that too
 
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dlads

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Just updated a bunch of stuff ontop of updating to windows 10, just this day done an update to my motherboard and it's lost my overclocks :( i was stable at 4.5, not a single blue screen, temps well within a safe range, idle 30 high 55

Could probably get more but i only want performance not bragging rights.

Trying to decipher all this again :( been using A-Tuning as i keep getting blue screens from my overclock and i've forgotten everything, all i want is it back the way it was :(

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for all your help mate.

Appreciated.
 
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